[Dandelion Wine] has no more reason to end than it has to begin. Its cause and effect relationship is a spontaneous one, for which A leads to B, and Z again to A. It is a brief glimpse on a crowded street of a stranger one can never forget and always love. It has the drug color vividness of black and white photography, giving the honest shade and contrast of face stories at moments removed from motion, from time, from definition. But, in the same breath, it has a prescribed structure, with Douglas, his brother Tom, his friends, his senses, all acting under the assumed reality which the freedom of fantasy offers. Dandelion Wine is fantasy, in the most boundless sense of the word. It is the fantasy which is always at hand, known to us all—not the thirty-five cents a copy world of escapism and plasticity, but the unrigid, free, real world of the mind's expectations. Though one may not have logical inference patterns to make, conflicts to resolve, or character types to establish, there is a single, though all encompassing direction, a "place" to go, an exercise to perform. In effect, this unavoidable and necessary element of imposition requires expansion, and passionate devotion to this mental growth. When Bradbury sets his stage, much like a theatre director, an animated world appears in which the facts of the imagination become as acceptable as the facts of reality. (p. 161)

Bradbury proves his fantasy by this reaching through the senses, this creating of real life. We believe, really believe, only that which is proven artistically, employing both the aesthetic criticism of the intellect and the senses. Only the latter is nearly infallible, as the virgin innocence of sensual intuition either refuses to accept or trustingly incorporates the devil deceptions of illusion's mists…. To write successful fantasy, to employ successful imagination, elements of the real world must be among the constituent ingredients of the mental exercise. Only then can the mind feel secure in its journey. (pp. 162-63)

What can threaten this sensual stage which Bradbury sets? His worlds of fantasy, his circus balloon journeys up and out, incorporate in their very nature a fastening line to the ground, a kinship with the realistic, cold visioned animal appraisal of life and death. And, to be sure, Douglas reflects off his first glimpse of death's impersonal reality, and looks forward to winter's harvestings of the dandelion wine…. But what can be done with the last breath finality of death; what can be done with the inescapable fact that we really don't want Douglas Spaulding to ever die? (p. 163)

What can fantasizing do to soften the blue steel edge of pain and aging and decay? Can one merely accept death as an inexplicable force, a cellophane haze of gradual dying lasting as long as life? And can the mythology of religion, of art, of Dandelion Wine satisfy us, explain to us perhaps, the mystery of death with the same force it uses in portraying the wonder of life? Bradbury asserts that fantasy is a way of dealing with the monster death, driving a cedar stake through a werewolf's heart, killing it, vomiting it out. (pp. 163-64)

In analyzing Bradbury's "style" one must carefully avoid scholastically rigid interpretations, if only for the sake of greater enjoyment. The beauty of his work, the personality of his written words, can best be appreciated by the innocent ears of readers who are not aware of archetypes and genres and styles. If one looks for contrived style in Bradbury's works, he is likely to sacrifice the full satisfaction of the experience. Of course, one does find in Dandelion Wine a conscious effort to be Bradbury throughout, to always be the fellow with the magic citric mind. Art is its process, and Dandelion Wine is the product of artistic creation, unique only in its virgin beauty, an experience that needn't be looked back upon and analyzed. This critique itself shows what happens when one reviews a Bradbury work; its beauty enslaves one to the point where the best picture seems to be the one with maximum Bradbury and minimum reviewer. Perhaps one sacrifices a context for interpretation, blurring the intrinsic uniqueness which is self expressive. It is remarkably simple to like Bradbury, to know and feel his style and perspective on life, without really being able to define them.

Air like water, scented with thyme … this is what Bradbury wants. Prose with rhyme and color vivid, poetry at all times. Children's newly-planted awareness, untarnished copper, untarnished eye. Spells, seconds, births, deaths, where you can

hold summer in your hand, pour summer in a glass, a tiny glass of course, the smallest sip of children; change the season in your veins by raising glass to lip and tilting summer in.

His is world of truth, a world of children, a world whose history recalls being born. It is a world free of burning fire's intentions, tragedy's grimace, and downhill falls. It is such a fine, honest world that it risks being classified as contrived, inflated literature. He almost seems to cheat. When he gets mad at death, he drives a stake through it. And when his heroes do wrong, they can erase the past with a life time. It is a world of real supermen. It is a material commodity in which buying and selling are nothing more than juggling, trading a perfect red ball for a perfect blue ball. He never gets mad, and he is always beautiful, and one gets jealous. (pp. 164-65)